


deltangam

by blood bag boogie (evil_bunny_king), evil_bunny_king



Series: The Ember Days [3]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: (they're all as bad as each other), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Always, F/F, F/M, Family, Home, Hurt/Comfort, Kiss on the Wrist, Names, Nathaniel you incurable romantic, Oneshot collection, Poly, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn, a kiss on a bruise, all the kisses who am I kidding, and all the burning, oh nathaniel, story told in moments, the detective has two hands, you bleeding heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/blood%20bag%20boogie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: Ava and the detective fall through time; Nathaniel takes the long way around.Time travel shenanigans, paradox, love and loss and -home. Poly Ava/Nate/Detective.
Relationships: Ava du Mortain/Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Ava du Mortain/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Female Detective/Ava du Mortain, Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Series: The Ember Days [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1936339
Comments: 35
Kudos: 34
Collections: The Ember Days





	1. Sharp (and oh so sweet)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline/contents:
> 
> X. [By the dying embers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527127/chapters/61935667) \- _the time-travel poly!fic. Dinah and Ava end up in Lauterbrunnen, 1730, with a Nathaniel they don't know (yet)._
> 
> 0\. [Old Gods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056924/chapters/68736567) \- _A masquerade at the turn of the 18th century. Ava du Mortain meets Nathaniel Sewell and spares him a dance_ (posted as separate work due to length).
> 
> 1\. Sharp (and oh so sweet) - _1730s. Nathaniel goes home._  
>  2\. Feral - _1730s. Ava and Nathaniel hunt._  
>  3\. Serpentine - _Dinah/Ava, time-travel, and a kiss on a bruise; cut from 'embers'. Lauterbrunnen, 1730s_  
>  4\. Pocket watch - _Blood (and time)._  
>  5\. A kiss on the wrist; _Paris, late 19th C. Ava/Nate._  
>  6\. Nathaniel Sewell and his many, many dog friends - _Nate adopts a street mutt. Ava/Nate, 19th C Prague._  
>  7\. [Odessa, 1838](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944504/chapters/71021439) \- Nate/Tobias. _Italian opera, russian poetry and warm Ukrainian nights. Nate falls in love._ (posted as separate work due to length).  
> 

_1730s - Autumn - Manchester_

In the decade after he was turned, Nathaniel is - unravelled. There is anger there, a raging against what can’t be undone, a still-vivid grief. It’s been ten years since he was turned. His family is still alive. He is dead to them and dead to himself and yet somehow so very much still alive - he recognises and doesn’t recognise himself; he’s a mess of raw, raw edges. He sequesters himself in a chalet in the swiss Alps as much to stop himself from going home as much as anything (everything) else.

He ends up going anyway.

He gathers himself and a few of his things and flees back down the mountain, treks across the continent and eventually risks the boat over the channel, and back to England. And it’s harrowing: he locks himself in his private room and curls up in his bunk - seasick, he’d said, to explain the moans - and an air of panic settles over the small boat, tension lacing the boatswain’s voice as he checks and checks the horizon again, somehow certain of an incoming storm (but it’s clear, it’s as clear as a month full of Sundays-)

He makes it to England, makes his way north to his family’s town house and it’s only when he’s passing Birmingham that he finally realises what he’s doing.

He still sees her, regardless. 

His sister. Full grown since he’d seen her last, married and with child - she presses a protective hand to the swell of her belly as she crosses the Manchester cobblestones and it’s only that vivid impression - the lack of familiarity, the distortion of his sister’s form, and that running, mumbling voice in the back of his mind reminding him that shock - the shock of a dead man alive again - could harm her, could kill them both - that stops him in his tracks, staggering across the street like a drunk.

He’s almost hit by a passing carriage. He weathers the shouted abuse, stumbling as he retreats back to the other side of the road and in the commotion, briefly, she looks up.

Her frown is distracted, squinted through the sunlight at the traffic. Her hazel eyes (with their splash of green) are strange, almost, in a face so drawn with age but the expression of them is as bright and familiar as when he’d swung her into his arms all those years ago, just a child.

Her companion closes his arm protectively over her shoulder, a smudge of cloak and hat and coiffed, blond curls as his gloved hand brings her away from the roadside, and she looks away. She hadn’t seen him, not quite - and it’s like he’s had the legs cut from beneath him as her unfamiliar shape turns, blurring into the crowd once more.

He finds a room for himself and stays in Manchester, helpless to do otherwise - a ghost, haunting his loved ones (he listens to them from across drawing rooms, shadows them in parallel streets, trying to think and write himself a way out of this situation- or at least, a letter-)

She has her child. She’d lost her first one. He only learns this now, haunting the rooftop and listening to her sob in the midwife’s arms, holding her squalling babe close and praising and mourning and thanking the gods (all of them, the ones he’d taught her as well as the Almighty).

She says, between breaths, that she would’ve named him Nathaniel. She calls her daughter Natalie, instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sad!Nate lurking in the coffee shops of manchester, staring down cups of hot water with a sprinkling of tea leaves in it (an attempt at stomaching ‘tea’);
> 
> sad!Nate in the room he’s secured with a widow at the edge of town, trying and failing to write letters - to his sister, to his parents, to Ava (he meets her in London, eventually. She offered to come to him but he asked that she wouldn’t, so she waited for him there, instead)
> 
> \--
> 
> To be honest, I write most of my stories in a similar verse, splintering from each other at different points. So the past history explored here, while definitely tying directly to [by the dying embers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527127/chapters/61935667) and time travel, also definitely is still Nate (and Ava's) background in my [the dancing and the dreaming'](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053032) Nate/Dinah series. 
> 
> The present/future just takes slightly different turns; occurs a little differently. Relationships shift. The three of them are soulmates in every iteration; they are just varyingly platonic and romantic, actualised at different times. Some of these variations are explored in this fic itself, as well (Serpentine, looking at you)
> 
> [EJ's wonderful Nate and Ava fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26432140/chapters/64395982) are another splinter verse. Her letters fic and Odessa occur in the same timeline; different detective, more variation, but common threads and foundational moments.
> 
> You do NOT need to read all of them, as we write them all as standalone, but it gives a lovely richness to the world when you start fitting the pieces together.


	2. Feral (Ava + Nate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel adjusts.
> 
> Nathaniel and Ava, after Nathaniel's turning.

**1730 - Summer - Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.**

Ava and Nate.

_-_

_Ava hunts._

The trip-tumble down the forest valley, the Ibex’s sides heaving, heart pounding, its rolling eyes wide as it scrabbles over the shale.

And then the warmth of coarse fur, firm flesh. The weight. It struggles against the hand wrapped around its horns, pressing its face into the dirt; kicks out uselessly as she pins down its hip, leaning, breathing in.

It’s an unequal struggle. But a brief one, as she lowers her head to its neck against that throbbing, violent pulse. The blood tastes of salt and earth as she drinks, the tang of the creature’s sweat and fear and musk in her nose, between her teeth. It slips down her throat easily and is finished all too soon. But it is _enough_.

She releases her grip on its limp form and lets it fall still against the dirt.

Nate is braced over the small, wriggling body in his hands, teeth sunk into its neck, his hair fallen loose and cascading over his shoulder and over his eyes. There’s a brace of other small bodies scattered behind them, necks broken and their long ears folded, their large, black eyes glazing in the sun.

“Enough?” she asks as he finishes, letting the rabbit fall from his fingers.

He turns, swaying a little as he does so - and then freezes, gaze caught on the sight of her mouth. She licks her lips and finds blood there, cooling in the breeze. She sees him follow it, his eyes wide and breath caught in his throat, and she turns slightly to wipe it away with her thumb, licking her fingers clean. 

Nate watches that, too. She can hear the tremor of his heartbeat, an edge that’s almost fear.

And then the rising breeze seems to snap him out of the moment, drawing him back to the forest, the mountain, rock and earth, and he turns away.

“Yes,” he says after a moment, so quietly she almost can’t hear him. “It is enough.”

He makes to walk away back the way they’ve come, careful to step over the bodies of the rabbits. He won’t look at her. He doesn’t look at her until she’s stepped the few strides to his side and placed her hand on the curve of his shoulder, pulling him to a gentle stop, her grip firm and lightly squeezing.

He blinks, at first startled before his expression slides to foolish. He looks down, heaving another long, controlled breath and his pulse trips beneath her fingers, pained, unsteady.

She holds him, grounds him, until his heartbeat resettles.

Eventually he smiles at her, and his brown eyes are red-rimmed, bright in the filtered light.

“Have I told you yet how I’ve missed you, lady Ava?” he asks, his tone light, teasing. Despite himself, it still breaks.

She raises her eyebrows and snorts, indulging his grin, and then lets her hand fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Deltangam - _means I am longing_](https://www.chaiandconversation.com/2014/11-persian-sayings-make-no-sense-english-part-two)


	3. Serpentine (Ava/Dinah/Nate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are not fragile,“ Ava grants, eventually. Her gaze falls back to her shoulder. “But you are human.”
> 
> Dinah reaches higher to brush her thumb over Ava’s temple, smoothing back the wisps of hair there instead of pressing away Ava’s frown. "And you are not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a gift for the wonderful sitsoncornflakes - time is starting to slide, now.
> 
> This one is explicitly tied to [by the dying embers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527127/chapters/61935667) but can be read as a standalone!
> 
> Dinah and Ava regroup that first night 300 years in the past, in the alpine chalet residence of Nathaniel Sewell (who is so much the same as Dinah knows him and yet not, 300 years the younger and freshly turned).

**1730 - Summer - Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland**.

-

“Dinah.”

Ava hovers in the open doorway of the room with a candle in hand. She’s a presence that Dinah would feel even if she couldn’t see her in the corner of her eye: the trace of gold; the fluid movement. Liquid grace. Her braid has unravelled across her shoulder, wisping against her neck, and it looks so soft in the candlelight that Dinah can almost imagine the feel of it between her fingers.

Ava is often like this - a contradiction. The steel and the flesh; the seaglass emerald of her eyes.

Nate had described Ava like that to her, once, in a letter slipped in a book. _Ribbon and sea glass._

 _And you, Dinah_. (she could hear the smile in his words, imagine the way his pen had stilled, the end tapped in thought against his chin) _Jasper_. (written with certainty, a flick of ink) _Serpentine_.

“Ava,” she says, from the bed she’s been given. (Nathaniel’s bed)

She’s gathered the blankets and pillows around her, wards against the chill seeping through the wooden siding, and as Ava steps into the room she smooths a hollow for her to join her. The chalet is small and the room close and dark, on an evening without the moon and the shutters pulled shut. It’s closer, still, with Ava in it. But it’s a warm, familiar intensity. 

“How are you?” Dinah asks. If Ava would let her, she would always ask first. 

Ava closes the door behind her, a symbol of privacy if nothing more. The light from the hallway, opened to the living room and the kitchen and their banked fires, shutters out with it and in the light of the few candles they have lit she looks - tired. Not small, she could never look small, Dinah thinks. But there are shadows smeared under her eyes, strain in the line of her mouth, even as her gaze gentles to look at her the way she often does. Seafoam over bare rock.

“I should be asking you that question.” Ava smiles at the echo, and then with a flicker, it’s gone. She looks at her, across the few steps that separate them. 

Dinah’s hands are in her lap, already chilled by the alpine evening, and she resists the urge to weave them together. No, she isn’t alright, not exactly, but she will be. “I’m fine.”

Ava doesn’t look away and she doesn’t approach, her gaze unwavering.

The message is clear: she will wait her out.

Dinah wonders if her heartbeat had fluttered when she’d lied. It’s an unfair advantage, that her vampires have.

“Come here?” Dinah says, finally.

She reaches out to her, ignoring the pull of her shoulder as she does.

And Ava acquiesces, stepping quietly over the warping wooden boards. She steps past Dinah’s outstretched hand to touch her cheek, slowly, carefully.

Her hands, at least, are still warm. Dinah lets out a breath, her eyes fluttering closed as Ava’s thumb brushes the curve of her cheekbone before ghosting to her jaw, her neck- the pads of her fingers, her blunted nails. She shivers, warm and cold at the same time, tilting her head to the side.

She feels as much as she hears Ava’s exhale - carefully released - and imagines the expression on her features, the softening of her mouth, her lips parting. Ava doesn’t pull away this time (and Dinah is getting used to that, the idea that they are - that what this is - is more). Instead she firms her touch over the slope of her shoulder, drawing aside the collar of her blouse to reveal the bruise that stretches beneath it and- oh.

Dinah knows that she can be predictable but - it’s still faintly galling to be played so easily. She’d have resisted Ava’s clucking otherwise, and Ava knows it.

“Cheating,” Dinah says with a breath of a laugh.

“Necessary,” Ava murmurs, a split second too late and Dinah opens her eyes with a frown.

Ava’s eyes are lowered, following the passage of her fingertips. She draws them carefully over the bruise, a slight furrow in her brow.

Dinah places her hand over hers and squeezes, drawing her gaze and touch away. 

“I am fine,” she says again, before Ava can say anything.

“Does it hurt?”

Dinah hesitates, stubbornness warring- it’s no less than what Ava must have been through, in the ambush, but Ava’s raised brow wins out the truth. “A little.”

Ava’s eyelashes flutter, that tell of hers that she’s internalising/brooding, and Dinah frowns, releasing her hand to reach for her. “Ava-”

“I know,” Ava says and she turns into her touch as Dinah brushes her cheek, finding the flush of heat beneath the skin. The furrow creases between her eyebrows again at the chill of Dinah’s hands but again, she doesn’t move away. Dinah thinks she could love her for that.

“You are not fragile,“ she grants, eventually. Her gaze falls back to her shoulder. “But you are human.”

Dinah reaches higher to brush her thumb over Ava’s temple, smoothing back the wisps of hair there instead of pressing away Ava’s frown. "And you are not?”

It’s a conversation they’ve had before. What makes humanity and inhumanity; a disagreement on the definition of terms and they both know it well. 

Ava’s gaze flicks back up to hers, bemused and uncompromising.

“Not my point.”

“I know.” Dinah attempts a smile. “But you say it like it’s a contradiction-” and then she lets her hand fall to her lap, and sighs. She steps back from that ledge and the arguments that wait beyond it. “I am human, Ava.” She tips her head back to look at her properly, the shadows under her eyes, the firm, full line of her mouth. “I bruise and then I heal. Slower than you do, but I will be fine.”

Her gaze is held. Not in challenge, not exactly, and a weight of words swells and then subsides, drawn back like an ebbing tide. 

After a moment, Ava bends closer. Deliberately. Her unbound hair slips from her shoulder in a slow cascade, almost tickling Dinah’s cheek- and then there’s the slide of her fingers beneath the collar of her shirt, seeking skin, the soft brush of her breath - the warmth of her mouth, on the bare skin of her shoulder.

She’s placing a kiss on the bruise.

Dinah’s breath catches. Her heart beats, fast and insistent like she’s running from something - or rather running towards it, burning and bright and golden - and she remains frozen in place a breathless moment. It’s an old habit of hers, from when moving too quickly or too suddenly might break whatever temporary spell had been cast… but they’ve changed from this. They are no longer stuck in liminal space - in _maybes_.

She raises her hand and catches Ava’s wrist, tucking her thumb against the swell of hers. And Ava exhales, quietly, her head turning towards hers, her lips hovering that lingering moment over her own.

The kiss is warm, warming. It’s intensity and dragging, lingering touches, slow drawn breath, and Ava fits between Dinah’s legs like she belongs there (she does), sinking to one knee, and then the other, her hands falling to Dinah’s lap and settling above her knees. Her thumbs sweep across her upper thigh, blazing heat behind them. She drinks in Dinah’s kisses with a sigh that sounds like her name.

Dinah - she doesn’t know where she settles her hands. They run through Ava’s hair, undoing the rest of her braid. Then one finds her waist, seeking skin; she curves the other to the back of her head, tangling, holding, and Ava presses closer, grip on her thighs tightening.

Eventually, eventually, Dinah pulls away, catching Ava’s lower lip between her teeth first, lightly tugging, and the soft sound Ava lets out shivers warm and electric through her. She hasn’t opened her eyes. She doesn’t think Ava has, either.

“Human,” she says, still close enough to breathe the words over her mouth and Ava’s scoff fans warm against her lips. Dinah leans forward, brushing her mouth over hers again and she can almost taste Ava’s retort before she concedes, before she chases her smile and the words are swallowed, the two of them losing time again for a little while.

When they next break away, Ava doesn’t go far. She settles back on her heels, looking down at their hands as Dinah’s fall to her lap as well, and Dinah traces her fingertips down over the backs of her hands, drawing circles around her knuckles.

Against Ava’s, her hands seem slender, warm-toned against the almost translucence of Ava’s skin. Ava’s hands are deceptively delicate for the life she’s lived, she thinks. It’s that contradiction of what she is, who she is- how her flesh shrugs away the legacies of effort and dedication, her history; how it belies the strength and power beneath the surface.

Ava turns one of them enough to catch and interlace their fingers, pressing warmth into Dinah’s chilled touch.

“You cannot win arguments that way,” she says.

Her expression is fond, despite herself. Dinah smiles lopsidedly back.

“I’m not trying to argue with you, Ava.”

Ava clicks her tongue, disagreeing, and Dinah squeezes the hand in hers, feeling that fluttering warmth in her chest when Ava squeezes back.

Ava watches their hands, the fit of their fingers. Her nails are well-kept and clipped short against the Dinah’s chipped polish. She’s not avoiding her gaze, not exactly, but Dinah can feel that weight of words between them again, see the tension still gathered in her shoulders. She recognises it now, she thinks. When Nate had been on ordered bed rest, beaten and bloodied in the aftermath of the rescue mission with the trappers, they had both… 

But they are all here, together. Even if it’s with Nathaniel, not Nate. The man they know is separated from them by a gulf of time and they’re stranded on this archipelago, this strange and half-familiar shore.

It hovers over them, how little they know. The uncertainty of their next steps, their way back. But they are not in this alone. 

"Ava.” Dinah reaches for her, brushing her hair from her cheek, asking her to look at her. After a moment, she does, and there are the words, harboured in those seaglass, seafoam eyes. “I worry about you, too.”

“There is nothing for you to worry about,” she says, a warm rumble, and Dinah frowns, thumbing the curve of her jaw.

“Of course there is. But we’ll get back home.” She says it even though she’s not sure she believes it, but she knows that they need to. “We’ll be okay.”

Ava’s jaw tightens. She blinks, still looking at her, something sharpening, resurfacing, the stone beneath the waves. “Yes, we will.”

There’s an edge of tension in the way she says it, swears it, like an oath. But Dinah brushes her unbound hair back behind her ear, gently, and her green eyes slip closed, some of the tension easing from her broad shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is slightly different from the approach I'll be going ahead with in the full fic- was using it to feel out my approach to the polymance!


	4. Pocket Watch (Nate)

After he's turned, Nathaniel Sewell takes control of the few things left within his grasp.

He takes a new name: Nate. He cannot have his old life, his humanity, or his family, and he has given his sister's children his name, and so he will adopt a new one instead.

(This name, itself, is a gift.

It's a gift from a someone who belongs - will belong - solely to him, whatever this new existence of his is, as unfamiliar as he is to himself - in form, in thought, in instinct, in _time -_

He does not know himself. He does not know his hands - their movement, the smoothed pads of his fingers (gone are the violinist’s calluses). He does not know his gait - his strides too long, his feet misplaced; he ducks through doorframes and spins books off of corners and he is a boy again, stumbling through the halls of his boarding school, with chalk on his palms and hand prints on his shirt.

The gift is the name and the promise: that one day, you will belong to someone, you will belong to two people, and they will love you, whole. For what you are. For what you were. For what you will be.

The name is as alike and unlike his own as he is like and unlike himself, but it is - and it will be - _his own._ )

Nate controls what he is. He cannot undo what has been done to him, or what he has done; what he is capable of doing, but he learns- he learns to understand it. 

He can pick out the sounds of the sparrows roosting in the neighbour’s eaves, down to the fluttering hearts, the shed feathers, the light tap of still-soft beaks against eggshells and the first gasped breaths of life, filling newly formed lungs.

He can smell the choke and sweat of the city outside, the sour undercurrent of the sewers, and understands why Ava hates urban centres so much; thinks of all the small places she's cultivated in the quiet corners of the world, shared only with the mice and the stars.

He learns that he can be - so much more than he once was. He is stronger. Faster. He's even _taller_ \- and he doubts he'd be recognisable to the ones that had known him, now, even if he wasn't so thoroughly dead.

He is more… persuasive. There is a possibility that fills his mouth when he wants something, he finds, sweet like sugared cream. There's an itch that takes to his fingers - and he starts commissioning larger pockets to be sewn in his outfits, starts wearing gloves; acquires a faulty pocket watch which requires winding and adjustment almost on the hour.

The _urge_ isless in the afternoons, in the glare of the sun and the swell of the day. It's thicker, honeyed in the evenings, when fresh blood hums beneath his skin and Ava has to draw him out of the stupor, the scarlet haze, gold and cream and the startling, sea glass emerald clarity of her held gaze. And so he adjusts, like that broken clock, chasing its slipping minutes. He drinks less, learns to walk in the sun, to appreciate the warmth on his skin.

He salvages what he can from the ruins of himself and fits it into something new, something he can almost recognise. Someday, he thinks, he might know himself entirely again.

Nate Sewell can't control what he is, what he was. But he can control what _he will be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is how I write meta and I added [a ton of additional notes on tumblr about this](https://evilbunnyking.tumblr.com/post/635711887380725760/nate-sewell-and-blood-and-time)-
> 
> Am I still playing around with what Nate's tier X ability is? _Yes_ \- we've had hints before, though. The panic on that fated ferry across the channel and back to England.
> 
> I feel like this is a harsher, more bitter little character study (in a very specific moment of time) but - our boy is not faulty, broken, not the redundant watch. He just... Needs time to adjust. And I have some lovely fluffy in-between pieces I've been working on, including loves past and present and dogs, so it'll get cheerier I promise-!


	5. Paris, late 19th C (Ava/Nate)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A kiss on the wrist.
> 
> This is a nod to EJ's amazing ['you or your memory'.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26432140/chapters/64395982)
> 
> Also, [Old Gods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056924/chapters/68736567) definitely belongs in this collection but was long enough to be posted separately; delicious Ava/Nate context there, please enjoy!

It's one of the intimacies Ava allows him, rare enough as it is. The brush of their hands, as they wander along the banks of the Seine. The arches of Notre Dame rise before them, the weight of humanity in the surrounding city but this early in the morning, it’s still quiet. There's a breath of air over the river, cool over the ripples left by the fishing boats and the barges carrying produce to market.

They walk together closely enough that he can feel the warmth of her arm through her light coat, the thin blouse she wears beneath, tucked into high-waisted trousers as is her habit.

Their fingers brush again, against her glove, no less deliberately, and she is the one that moves to take his hand in hers. Her thumb swipes over his knuckles, just the once.

"Your hands are cold," she says after a moment, and he can hear the frown in her voice.

He turns his head just enough to peek and yes, there it is, that wrinkle between her brows, part-displeasure and part-concern.

"So they are," he concedes. "They will warm up, soon enough."

The frown deepens, and she turns her head to look at him. "Have you lost your gloves?"

"Pockets," is his short answer and her response is an unimpressed scoff. He smiles, and it’s slow with the chill air, the sluggishness of the oncoming day. Ava endures the long summer days as much as he looks forward to them but this time, with only the glow of the sun on the horizon, is a compromise they both enjoy. "Also why would I need them, when I have you?"

He tugs on their joint hands to make the point and she scoffs again, turning back to the river, the faintest rose of a blush climbing her neck. He grins, helplessly fond.

He's feeling bold this Parisian morning; reckless - and he blames this for why he pulls her captured hand up between them, twisting it to bare her wrist and placing a kiss in the gap between coat and glove.

He enjoys the sudden flutter of her pulse. The thrill and lovesick lightness of his own heartbeat, warm and slightly bittersweet, and he smells, he tastes - soft leather, the chill of the morning. Her beneath it, warm and familiar. Like brown sugar. Clove. 

They've stopped walking. Ava is staring at him, her eyes slightly wide. In this light they’re jade, as clouded and impenetrable as her expression; they’re soft, like the line of her mouth, and it takes her a long moment but then, carefully, she pulls her hand back away.

He lets his own fall back to his side, holding her gaze. It’s not quite a challenge, he thinks; but he's not quite sure what else he is looking for, waiting for. Still, he hopes. Still, he loves her, and will continue to do so, for as long as she will allow.

Perhaps that’s it.

Eventually she blinks away, turning, swaying towards the river. He moves in turn, stepping forward a half-step before he stops himself, drawn in her wake.

Ava clears her throat, her hand raising to unsubtly curl around her left wrist, where he'd kissed her.

(he feels the ghost heat of it, against his mouth)

“Shall we keep going?” she asks, her voice low but once again steady.

He tucks his hands in his pockets, and palms his pocket watch, letting the cool smoothness of the metal replace the memory of her hand in his. He smiles. 

"Of course."


	6. Nathaniel Sewell and his many many dog friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nathaniel adopts a street mutt / Ava and Nate get a dog. Prague, 19th C (nebulous)

It is a quick, ferocious battle, one that for once Ava loses - and if there isn’t a modicum of grace in her surrender, in the way she turns on her heel and departs from the room, a sharp word snarled over her shoulder - well, she’ll be forgiven the lack of politesse. She is going to be smelling of dog for the next decade, after all.

And that is, indeed the issue:

Nathaniel has adopted a street mutt.

The dog will be Nathaniel’s responsibility. 

He names it _Médor_.

She calls it _Canaille_.

Despite her misgivings, Médor settles into their household with a simple enthusiasm. It dedicates its short life to following Ava when it thinks she’s not looking and chewing Nathaniel’s favourite slippers, and while the latter incident, she’d hoped, might be the final straw, after the weeks Nathaniel had spent gently coaxing his young charge to not defecate in the middle of the expensive living room rug, even this was met with a long, but ultimately fond, sigh.

Médor is a terrier cross of some kind, small enough as a whelp to fit in the palms of her hands.

It has what will eventually be called heterochromia: one brown eye and one amber, and patchwork fur, russet running to brown to white and a black mantle.

He has dancing shoes, Nate says one night, disgustingly fond.

He looks like he’s run through paint, is Ava’s retort.

\--

They had found the pup curled against its mother at the edge of Wenceslas Square. Victims of a passing carriage, the mother dead and the pup soon to follow - and Ava understands Nathaniel’s sentimentality, the care for each life, especially one as young and as unfortunate as this one.

But there are many dead and dying dogs, many unfortunate souls, in Prague. They simply cannot rescue them all.

 _But we can save this one_ , Nathaniel had said. He’d spoken lightly, amicably, but there’d been an edge to the words, a tension in the line of his back as he’d stooped, and then crouched in the gutter, with its collected detritus.

She’d stood beside him, the edge of her coat brushing his shoulder, a foot in the street and a foot on the pavement and the bustle of the city had ignored them both, preoccupied with the morning and its bright, chill air.

It would have a few years, at most, brutish and quick. A few hours and it would have strayed into traffic and been gifted the mercy of a short if painful life.

She hadn’t said it.

He’d answered all the same.

 _A life,_ (he’d pried the pup carefully from the cool body of its mother, curving it into his open palm) _is a life_.

Now, their new charge has been fed, watered and bathed. It wriggles with revived energy, struggling to escape Nathaniel and his gentle but determined toweling.

The animal yips and barks and licks whatever space of skin it can reach, and Nathaniel laughs, patently delighted.

“What to call you?” he murmurs, his voice almost a coo.

Ava’s suggestions, ranging in indelicacy, are pointedly ignored.

\--

Spring settles over the city.

They make the requisite social calls, representing the ‘agency’ among the supernatural communities and ‘satisfying the curiosity’ of the rest, as Nathaniel puts it. Ava doesn’t care. But she knows that this is necessary, a _necessity_ , and so, she dedicates the minimum effort required. She memorises key names. She dons the least uncomfortable outfits she is supplied with. She lets Nathaniel launch them into Prague society, pup in tow.

This last condition, Nate will not yield upon.

It is also something that he pays for, dearly.

Ava watches him wrestle the pup for the ruins of yet another cravat, the latest sacrificed, one warming May morning.

“Médor,” Nathaniel says, imploringly, on his knees on the living room rug, “Médor, _please-_ ”

He works his fingers down the fabric, attempting to pry it from the pup’s mouth. She catches a glimpse of saliva-sodden silk, the roses embroidered on the hem, before Medor wriggles out of Nathaniel’s grip again, scrambling backwards- and she remembers Nathaniel picking it out, she realises; how he'd mulled over it, just earlier that week.

The mutt must have a taste for them, now.

Médor growls, playful, delighted, throwing himself backwards against Nathaniel’s grip. When Nathaniel tries to twist the fabric free he simply rolls with the movement instead, bracing his paws on his wrist.

Ava snorts.

“You’re enjoying this,” Nathaniel says. She flicks her gaze towards him from where she stands by the casement window, tacitly watching the city stir outside, and he looks back, his expression torn between exasperation and fondness. 

The pup scampers back and forth and the necktie finally gives in with a resounding _rip_.

Nathaniel winces.

This time she does laugh.

Picking up a newspaper from the arm of a nearby chair (to hide her smile behind), she turns towards him, stepping towards the door. The sunlight streams through the leaded glass behind her, warm on her back, tracing stripes across the polished floors. 

“You _have_ sacrificed many of your neckties to the beast, now,” she says. 

“Médor," he corrects, automatically. _Médor_ worries the remnants he’s retained hold of again, shaking Nathaniel’s arm to its socket, and Nathaniel sighs, as always patently fond. “And yes; yes, I have.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You don’t regret it, though.

He grins up at her and her newspaper, unrepentant.

“No, I really don’t.”

Allowing the pup a final tussle, he releases the fabric and the mutt rolls backwards, carried by its own momentum. It promptly disappears behind the sofa and with a soft laugh, Nathaniel levers himself back to his feet, wincing slightly as he straightens his knees. 

He’s as bright-eyed as the pup, like this. His hair has pulled free from its loose ribbon to curl at his cheek, falling about his eyes as he looks down to unroll his sleeves, straightening them with familiar, precise movements. He bends to dust the fur from his pressed trousers, as well, and the rings he often dons catch in a spill of sunlight, flashing on the forefinger and thumb of his opposing hands.

Catching herself watching, she rolls herself forward as well, making to retreat back to her rooms.

They have appointments to keep, after all.

“We are expected at eleven,” she reminds him, depositing the paper back on the sofa. Nathaniel directs her another one of his bright smiles, already hunting for the pup again.

“We will be ready.”

"I hope so," she grouses, and his laugh accompanies her into the hall, with its austere panelling and clutter of antique furniture, the ones that Nathaniel has filled it with these past few months. Her life is cluttered now, she thinks, but she finds she doesn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consolidated this- but also, now finished with a sweet and silly part three :D I might dip into this again - Ava needs a cat, after all, and we gotta know what happened to Médor in the end-

**Author's Note:**

> Other stories in this verse:
> 
> [Old Gods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056924/chapters/68736567) \- _A masquerade at the turn of the 18th century. Ava du Mortain meets Nathaniel Sewell and spares him a dance._  
> [All yearning and all tenderness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944504/chapters/71021439) \- _Odessa, 1838; Italian opera, russian poetry and warm Ukrainian nights. Nate falls in love_  
> [By the dying embers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527127/chapters/61935667) \- _the time-travel poly!fic. Dinah and Ava end up in Lauterbrunnen, 1730, with a Nathaniel they don't know (yet)._
> 
> I also realise I now have 4 separate N Sewell oneshot collections, if you're interested in more ;)  
> 1\. Fun, romantic shorts ([For the Dancing and the Dreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25192516/chapters/61056040))  
> 2\. _spicy_ shorts ([Natural Philosophy)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756792/chapters/62551120)  
> 3\. love letters ([Vanilla, Bergamot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25981189/chapters/63163873))  
> 4\. Historical/time travel shorts, Poly!AU with Ava/Dinah/Nate, spanning 300 years ([deltangam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542269/chapters/67359454))


End file.
